Many automatic transmissions for vehicles have a manual transmission mode in addition to an automatic transmission mode. A patent document 1 discloses a technique of performing an automatic shift at the time of the manual shift mode in such an automatic transmission.
The automatic shift in the manual shift mode as disclosed in the patent document 1 has a following problem. For example, an assumption is that a manual upshift operation is performed manually when a so-called kick down command for a downshift is produced by sharp or immediate depression of the accelerator pedal by the driver. In this case, the downshift command and the upshift command are produced simultaneously. Accordingly, the downshift command and the upshift command are canceled out each other, and the automatic shift is not achieved. In practice, the manual shifting operation in the direction opposite to the automatic shift is likely to be a misoperation of the driver. By failing to perform the automatic shift based on such a misoperation, the control system tends to degrade the operability or drivability as a result.